The Morning Champion

Oct 28, 2009

By Charles Moore '10

Not many high school athletes can say they have played in front
of 25,000 screaming fans in an NFL stadium. Then again, not many
high school athletes have played in what has been dubbed “The
Greatest Game in Minnesota Prep Bowl History.” Senior Jon
Charest (pronounced Shuh-REST) is one of those lucky few
athletes.

With two minutes left in the fourth quarter of the 2005 state
championship, trailing 24-21, Charest’s Wayzata High School
decided to go for it on fourth and four. Charest stood on the
sideline as a defensive lineman, already having done his duty by
recording a sack. All he could do was watch and hope. Luckily, what
he witnessed was his running back run the ball past the first-down
marker, all the way down to the two-yard line. One play later
Wayzata punched the ball in for the go-ahead touchdown. The game
was capped off by Charest’s defense coming back on to the
field and stopping Cretin-Derham with an interception on the
one-yard line.

“It was unbelievable,” says Charest. “The crowd
was loud. The entire lower level of the Metrodome was filled. The
game didn’t even start until about 10:30 p.m. because back
then they played all the state championship football games on the
same day and the first two games went into overtime. I rode home a
state champion as the sun was rising.”

You might think a kid who played for the same high school football
program as Marion Barber (Dallas Cowboys), Dominique Barber
(Houston Texans), Ben Hamilton (Denver Broncos) and James
Laurinaitis (St. Louis Rams) would have dreams of college and
professional football from day one, but that was not the case for
Charest. It was not until the end of Charest’s junior season,
when Wayzata lost the state championship game, that he decided
college football might be in the cards for him.

“It was really after that first state championship game that
I said to myself ‘OK, I could do this for four more
years,’” says Charest. “I talked with my coach
[Brad Anderson] and he basically said, ‘You’re taller
than most defensive lineman in college football, I think you are
going to need to be recruited as an offensive lineman.’ I had
played defensive line all of high school because our offensive line
averaged 300 lbs., which was just absurd for a high
school.”

Perhaps the reason Charest was not so focused on football was
because of all the other interesting activities in which he was
involved. As a Boy Scout he was able to go backpacking through the
Rockies and canoeing through the wilderness of northern Minnesota.
After years of dedication, he eventually earned the rank of Eagle
Scout, completing a 100-hour service project where he rebuilt a set
of stairs travelling from tennis courts down a steep hill at a
local middle school.

“I basically went to the local middle school and said
‘What do you need done?’ and that’s what their
principal came up with,” says Charest. “It’s
funny because you come to Yale and it seems like everyone is an
Eagle Scout or everyone was captain of their high school team, but
back home it’s a pretty big deal.”

When Charest was not roughing it in the wilderness or grinding it
out on the football field, he could be found at his local Target
working in the dairy department. Target’s
“milkman” worked eight hour days, unloading pallets of
dairy.

“It was great during the summers,” says Charest.
“I’d get to work out in the mornings and then work the
evening shift. The cold fridges of the dairy department felt great
in the heat of the summer.”

When it finally came time to think about college, Charest had
quite the decision to make. With the ability to play at a state
school and the majority of his high school classmates choosing to
attend schools like the University of Minnesota, Charest looked at
schools like Iowa State. But once the Ivy League started calling,
Charest’s mindset shifted.

“Iowa State was advertising the fact that their team’s
average GPA was a 2.5 and that just wasn’t something I was
excited about,” says Charest. “Once schools like Yale,
Princeton, and Columbia contacted me, I pretty much forgot about
the state school route.”

Charest visited Princeton first and had all but made up his mind
to play defensive line for the Tigers, when Anderson told him to
visit another school and think about it for a while. It is a good
thing he did.

“The second I got to Yale, all thoughts of Princeton
disappeared,” says Charest. “The residential college
system was what really drew me here, plus, I mean come on,
it’s Yale football. You can’t beat a tradition like
that.”

Charest came into Yale as an offensive lineman and played on the
JV squad freshman year. During his sophomore year, Charest got in
some varsity time with the field goal unit and by the time junior
year rolled around, it looked like Charest would see significant
time on the varsity offensive line. He played in the first four
games of the season before suffering a scary season-ending injury.
While on the line for a field goal, the defensive lineman who
lined-up opposite Charest made helmet to helmet contact, causing a
disk to rupture in Charest’s neck.

“It was pretty scary,” says Charest. “I had
partial paralysis in my left arm for a couple weeks. Initially, we
didn’t know how long I was going to be out, but we did know I
would regain control of my arm. I wasn’t sure I was going to
return to football, though. It was the kind of situation where I
told myself, if I didn’t make it back for spring ball, I was
done. Luckily by week eight of my recovery it became pretty clear I
would be back.”

And come back he has. Charest looks to feature heavily on the
offensive line in a season which he says “would be a big
disappointment if Yale does not win the Ivy League and beat
Harvard.” The excitement in his voice as he talks about this
season is evident; something he says has 100% to do with Tom
Williams, Yale’s new Joel E. Smilow ’54 Head Coach of
Football, and the new mindset of the program.

But even if the Bulldogs don’t manage to win the Ivy League
Championship, life will go on for Charest. The molecular, cellular
and developmental biology major wants to take a year off after
college and then apply to medical school. His dream has always been
to work in genetics. Charest worked this past summer in a Yale
research lab translating research in German, which he speaks
fluently after spending a summer during high school in a foreign
exchange program.

“That program was great,” says Charest. “The
European school system is different, so I basically finished my
junior year at Wayzata and then went over to Germany and finished
out the last month of their school year. I lived with a family in
Germany where the mother was a professional Italian chef. It was
fantastic.”

For now though, Charest is focused on football. For the first time
in memory, the Yale team is waking up before sun rise to practice
and watch film three days a week. And while practicing at sun rise
is not quite the same as riding home a state champion at sun rise,
the plan is that – as the sun sets on his Yale football
career – there may be just one more championship in Jon
Charest’s sights.